Daylight
by PersonaOfBetrayal
Summary: Just because a dream isn't alive, doesn't mean that it is dead either. A short story and interpretation on the fayth's dialogue and what it means to a dream. Contains very cryptic language and symbolism.


A young girl, of auburn hair and halved ringlets, appeared before them; drifting.

_Sin is cursed. Sin prays. It curses its form, it prays for dissolution._

_Sin sees dreams of its own destruction. Sin is looking at us._

_We live in a fading echo of time left us by the destroyer._

_Free him from Yu Yevon. Free him – the fayth that has become Sin._

He stood on the rubble's edge, watching Sin, melancholy dancing and teetering on the brims of his aquatic eyes. The demon, once human, returned his motions; not with the blazing lust for destruction and death that would make one's blood run frigid, but with an understanding, almost gentle twitch of his rough scaly hide. It turned and delved back into the stagnant poisonous tides of its home, the piercing shrieks of trapped souls drowning with the sunset. Above the murky ripples of brown, it saw an airship, floating silently by.

It drifted into the deep, murmuring screams, before it would lose its sense and once again see blood red. Fins dug into the fragile seabed, the pyreflies comforting, yet taunting him.

He would be saved. He would save him from this monstrous form, and put demons, both of his and himself, to dreamless rest.

To rest, after ten years.

A young man, garbed in attire of unjust warfare, towered before them; pity scorching his voice.

_Sin swam in the sea near Zanarkand. Perhaps the waking dream eased its suffering._

_Your father touched Sin and became real that night, foundering in the seas of Spira._

_How sad now, that he is caught in the tragic spiral. _

_He is Sin. He is lost._

The man, that young man of dirty yet clean tresses, and remnants of the sun lingering in his skin; he refused to listen to those words. He didn't want to listen to anything, lest they doused his last embers of hope. Even after he had heard the fading prose of several fayth; even after he had witnessed the Grandmaester's cowardice; even after he had wept as he held his father to his blood clad arms, knowing there was no way to save him, his ears fell deaf on many nothings.

His arms shook with blotched guilt, and with curdling fear, as he drove his blade through many an aeon. He looked onward, trying not to break as he saw their bloody corpses collapse to the ground, and the blackened and infected abomination of a writhing soul seep out of their lifeless glow. His friends…his family, he had betrayed them. The aeons, and the living mortals that stood supporting him. He was not among those mortals. He was unsure if he was even above them at all. He turned to the six of them, regretful. He remembered to listen, as he shared his secrets. He remembered his purpose, as his summoner looked at him with pleading eyes.

As he whipped around to the unspeakable enmity before him, its sigil taunting his mere existence, he cried out his last yell of victory.

Blade of oceans, stained black, he ran. He ran forward.

An elderly man, dressed in burnt robes, appeared before them; his throat shaking and his voice struggling.

_For a long time, we had forgotten how to go forward. You reminded us we must go forward._

_Yes, we must run._

_Let us go, you who share our dreaming._

_Come, and we will run till the dream's end._

His sword pierced the eye of Yevon, spurting its sickly black blood from its slimy pores and onto the crystalline blade. It seeped through and mingled with the once pure water, darkening its appearance with a symbol of slain. His eyes, also once pure, darkened. Not only from bloody yet deserved murder, but from that very murder signalling his impending doom. It was rather strange, really. Killing a man, the core of the spiral of death, would lead to his and his homeland's very own death, in what otherwise would be eternal life. Corrupt. That's what it was, ultimately.

From the gaping scar of the monster's eye, came a blinding light as the rest of its body was shrouded in black and red. It rose into the sky as the levitating pagodas closed in on it, sealing the parasite away forever. A ball of speeding light encased the seven warriors as they looked onward in awe, and the world fell into a peaceful silence. Yu Yevon had vanished, never to be seen again.

The white died down after what seemed like a lifetime. Instead of the spinning golden vortex of a throne room they had been trapped in, he found himself back near the completely restored stadium, standing on the deck of their airship. The portal contained within the stadium's walls had disappeared, and he found his distraught summoner dancing in front of them all. She began to send Sin, now that it was nothing more than a vacant shell waiting to be destroyed. It was all coming to an end. His mentor, long dead for a peaceful decade, departed to the Farplane, now that he had no reason to be in Spira anymore. Sin sunk into the molten rift of the Farplane as it exploded into millions of jubilant pyreflies. The young warrior could feel a cold draft and a sinking feeling inside of him, which he realised as the disappearance of the fayth as they fled from their stone prisons.

For a while, everything was nothing. He could still feel the stinging winds sweep by him, the weight of his sword hanging by his fingers, the ache in his gut as he watched the aeons dissolve once and for all. He thought then, that maybe, it wasn't true. Maybe he didn't have to say goodbye. Maybe he didn't have to cry again. The possibility, that meek possibility that he shamefully wished for, that he just simply wasn't a…

His arms began to distort, sickly green colours cascading along his skin. He heard gasps, and his deep blue eyes rose to meet the denial of his summoner's. It all came to them. Their young swordsman. The one who would always smile and shine in times of despair, the one who would always ask questions and receive glares in return, the one who unintentionally captured the broken heart of their summoner and pieced it back together that night… that young swordsman, was an aeon. A fleeting dream. And they never cared to realise.

He took off with few words, ashamed for keeping the truth from them, and because he wanted the pain to end quickly and near effortlessly. He heard frantic footsteps, and he turned around to just barely see his summoner attempt to embrace him one last time. But by that point, he was already lost. She passed through him, as if he was just a mirage. A mirage that was so very real just a few days ago. The heart that he pieced together with such tenderness, shattered. Although he was no longer one with the world, he wrapped his fading arms around her shoulders from behind; salvaging the precious few seconds they had left, and at the same time quietly declaring their unending love for one another.

When the final moment ended as soon as it started, he was reminded that he must go forward. He leapt from the air and dove into the golden mist, the rift swallowing him whole as it closed up. And everything went dark.

A young priestess, cloaked in ornate dressings, appeared before them; frost making her voice hoarse.

_Should the dreaming end, you too will disappear – fade into Spira's sea, Spira's sky._

_But do not weep, nor rise in anger. Even we were once human._

_That is why we must dream. Let us summon a sea in a new dream world._

_A new sea for you to swim._

He didn't know how much time had passed since that terrible night. He had been floating around in his vast sea for what seemed like eons. Drifting, in and out of consciousness. Drifting, in a space so empty and void and lonely. Drifting, for he did not want to move, for but to just escape, die, dream; anything to relieve him of this odious torment in which the fayth had capsuled him in. But alas, those things were what dreams couldn't do. Dreams… they never die. They are either blessed with fulfilment and lives full of contentment, or cursed with being forgotten and cast aside, but to where? He couldn't remember. He never could die in a sea, anyway.

Black and rippling blue, blue and rippling black. This was what he wanted, right? A new dream world, where he could just drift and swim and dream in, and never have to experience pain again. He could live eternally, doing as he pleased, and never have to think unhappy thoughts or hold resentment towards anybody, because he was alone. Alone, because he was the only dream alive.

But… dreams never die. They drift and swim and dream without life or set reasoning, they may think that they have died, but never do they… die. Sin drifted under the master's strings, never dying, though it wanted to. His father swam through the sea and was swept away into another world, but never died, even though everyone thought he did. Zanarkand, his Zanarkand… though it was a dream, a lie; it never slept. It never dreamed of dying. The sunrise, down in the sea, gave everyone a reason to waken. Daylight… determined the fate of those dreams. It kept them awake. It kept them _alive._

He wished again and again for that daylight to shine upon his faded tresses once again. For the sun to shine hope upon his dream world of peaceful darkness. It never came… he thought it never would.

A masked man, his beastly companion by his side, appeared before them; empathetic.

_You are a fading dream, but one touched by reality._

_Spira will not forget its reality, nor the one who saved it._

_Run, dream, run on._

_Pass beyond the waking and walk into daylight._

Of course, he had realised.

After months of endless drifting, effortless swimming, and lifeless dreaming, he had realised. The daylight was there from the beginning. It was ready to beam warmth into his cold stationary body. It was willing to accept his reality, and was pleading for him to be saved by it.

He had just forgotten to run. Forgotten to run forward.

He opened his eyes, reflecting that of the black and blue from his sleep. He could make out thin white rays of light, which coloured the ocean above him with blue, bright blue, and blinding white. Dawning broke out on him. He unfurled his arms and legs, and began to push himself towards the light. Pushes turned into swimming motions, and soon, he wasn't even sure if he was swimming at all. It was more of the blur between swimming and frantic, desperate running. He never looked back into the blue and black. He was almost there. Swimming, running, swimming, running; past the blue, past the bright blue. His body was filled with warmth. He could hear the sound of a whistle. The blinding white became denser, and at last, he broke the surface.

His eyes met a different kind of blue. It was not the dark, lifeless blue that he dreamed about, but rather the blue that was brimming and shimmering with life and reality. He directed his gaze towards the towering sun, shining white with daylight. He didn't mind the pain of staring at it; pain was only accompanied with joy. As he looked down, he noticed a very peculiar something. His body wasn't completely engulfed in water. Rather, it was just lapping at the soles of his feet. He overcame the water. He broke free from his prison, and became reality.

Smiling, he pivoted on the blinding white sand and looked towards his new home. As he expected, his summoner was in front of him, face of shock and tears of joy in her green and blue eyes. She slowly stumbled towards him, her arm outstretched in place of her lost words. But in the end, it was he who ran forward, and they realised together. He was real. He was alive. He was awake. He was fulfilled.

Dreams never die. They only think of such, when their time is up. But, if you realise that you must go forward, and fulfil the wishes of that dream, it will realise that it was always alive to begin with. It just needed to become real.

A young boy, shawled in wisdom, flickered before him; smiling.

_You two are more than just dreams now._

_Just a little more, and maybe…_

_Maybe you are the dream,_

_that will end our dreaming at last._

~The End


End file.
